Sergio Agüero needs one more goal to equal Eric Brook’s 78-year-old Manchester City scoring record and there are not many people at the club who imagine the Argentinian is going to hang around for long on his present tally of 176.

Shakhtar Donetsk took little time to hurl the cat among the pigeons in a Champions League group most observers expected to be dominated by Napoli and Manchester City, with the Ukrainian side and Feyenoord making up the numbers.

Jürgen Klopp seemed genuinely excited by his first visit to Moscow and the formidable police presence that greeted Liverpool’s arrival at Sheremetyevo Airport. The prospect of finally unleashing his most talented attacking quartet provided another adrenalin-rush but Spartak Moscow away, he cautioned, might not be the place for “all the artists”.

To Harry Kane it is a numbers game and, like every football fan in Europe, the Tottenham Hotspur striker is in awe of those posted by two players in particular. You know who they are. There was a time when a goalscorer would be feted for getting 20 in a league season; for reaching a ratio of one in every two matches. That was in the era before Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

For more than half an hour, José Mourinho sat waiting on the Manchester United team coach outside St Mary’s doubtless basking in the comfort of a job well done after extending his side’s unbeaten run to eight matches.

Sergio Agüero needs one more goal to equal Eric Brook’s 78-year-old Manchester City scoring record and there are not many people at the club who imagine the Argentinian is going to hang around for long on his present tally of 176.

Shakhtar Donetsk took little time to hurl the cat among the pigeons in a Champions League group most observers expected to be dominated by Napoli and Manchester City, with the Ukrainian side and Feyenoord making up the numbers.